New Delhi, Jan 10,2023: The Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India-NCR has sought government attention on frequent disruptions in construction activities due to implementation of GRAP-III in the NCR areas as the pollution level has turned “severe”.

“We, on behalf of our member developers, wish to bring certain areas of concern to your kind notice including loss of hundreds of crores of nation’s wealth, unemployment and delay in possession of flat to faultless home buyers,” it said in a communication to Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav.

The CREDAI has said that construction and demolition activities have already been banned for 29 days. However, construction activities once stopped, takes more than 15 to 30 days to resume full-fledged operations, hence in nutshell, it will not be wrong to mention that construction is banned from 2.5 months i.e. since October 29, 2022.

“As per another school of thought and estimate of certain experts, one week ‘construction ban’ impacts a ‘construction site’ for more than a month leading huge loss to real estate companies, labourers, vendors, ancillary industries and government revenue,” it said.

It has proposed that since RERA registered projects involve interest of general public (Home Buyers) and strictly follow government guidelines so as to minimise pollution hence RERA registered projects should be considered as a public interest project.

“It is mandatory to complete these RERA registered projects within a specific time-frame as heavy penalties are involved and at later stage, it even becomes headache for RERA authorities while granting time-extension or while awarding interest to buyers,” it said.

According to the communication by CREDAI-NCR President Manoj Gaur, certain experts are verbally mentioning that practically construction is banned from last 2.5 months but even then pollution/AQI level is quite bad which itself proves that construction activities (except demolition, excavation, dry stone cutting etc.) are not responsible for pollution and increased AQI.

“With all due regards, we request you to please cross-check this point from Government empaneled experts as well and get construction activities excluded from GRAP so that entire real estate sector, labourers, vendors, ancillary industries get relief and revenue of government increases,” it said.

“We hope the government will provide some flexibility either in the RERA deadlines or allow those activities which do not create pollution like painting, plumbing, wiring and so on,” said Lalit Aggarwal, co-founder and vice-chairman, Signature Global.